You have a point, there. I'd prefer a British paper - as I said I have a preference for taking a paper that at least some other people around me are reading too. (In my next life I'd like to be a lemming.) Will definitely consider the FT. Not only would it be educational, the pink pages in the recycling would impress the neighbours as well.

Alex Bensky writes:

I see the British papers from time to time and everything you say, and more, is true. And yet...one day wander over to one of our excuses for a local paper, the Detroit Free Press, at www.freep.com.

Within the last two days it has had two large front page stories on the new "Star Wars" movie, not to mention exhaustive coverage elsewhere. Last fall some high school students played a cruel prank on a fat classmate and got her elected homecoming queen. She handled it with dignity and the Free Press had six stories on it, including two major front page articles with photographs.

I could go on and on...I'll confine myself to mentioning that about a year ago a columnist wrote that she was going to write about her sex life although she thought many of her readers would be disinterested in it. I wrote to ask if she thought the distinction between "disinterested" and "uninterested" was no longer worth maintaining. She hadn't known there was one.

The paper is written in fairly simple, easy to read prose, lots of short paragraphs, and everything is personalized, no matter the subject matter: "Housewife Betty Jones of suburban Ferndale is worried about the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs..." They've also managed to gut what used to be a pretty good comics section.

The papers are so bad that since I like a morning paper I get the NY Times, and you might be surprised to see what their arts section now thinks is worthy of cultural coverage. So count your blessings.